Design
Design theme links to all other themes into its own sphere. New designs will have to have environmental impacts at all levels. From materials used in vehicles to environmentally sound manufacturing methods, product end-of-life, design for dismantling, re-use and recycling.
Development times will continue to be shortened due to new advances in software and hardware developments like rapid prototyping machines.
Research priorities have been identified as:
- Design of components for re-use and design of vehicles for dismantling.
- Customer informed design to ensure different types of customer needs and expectations can be met at an affordable price
- Electronic data exchange for design, analysis, manufacture, test and field. Transfer approaches from other industry sectors.